Interoperability standards will progress as the proliferation of clinical information systems expand. Neither patients nor physicians will stand for putting information into electronic healthcare systems and not be able to have that information seamlessly move from one system to another in a useable way. The days of entering the same information over and over as patients migrate from one treatment setting to another must come to an end if we are to see a return on investment for automating the medical environment. It is also the only way we are going to see healthcare providers use the medical information entered into these systems to change the way they practice medicine. The data exchanged must be reliable and fit within their workflow resulting in actionable information at the point of care.
And finally, analysts see the adoption of a measuring mechanism similar to the seven stage HIMSS Acute Care Adoption scale being developed for the ambulatory setting. The goal of this measurement device will be to push the market toward true meaningful adoption of EHRs with a focus on health information exchange, medical device interoperability and clinical/business intelligence across the spectrum of healthcare institutions.
John Tempesco, FACHE, is the Chief Marketing Officer at ICA. This blog post was first published on ICA’s HITme Blog. John has 37 years of healthcare experience, including a two decade career in health information technology in both the government and civilian sectors.  He is a Fellow in both the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Life Management Institute, as well as a Certified Managed Care Executive.